Other List Files

Other List Files

Hamm was a long-standing member of the British Union of Fascists and the founder (in 1946) of the League of Ex-Servicemen and Women.

These list files detail investigations into Hamm and his activities that began in 1938. For the most part they concentrate on reports of his activities, as a teacher in the Falkland Islands before the Second World War, in internment, in the army etc. There is one letter, from February 1943, from the Jewish Defence Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews to the Security Service, pressing for Hamm to be investigated since it had come to the Board's attention that Ham was 'spreading hatred and racial hatred among the members of his unit', the Royal Tank Regiment (KV 6/1 folio 130).

The case of CICERO, a Turkish valet in the employ of the British ambassador in Ankara during the years 1943-44, has been characterised as one of the most successful espionage episodes of the Second World War, and was in all probability the greatest German coup. It provided the Germans with streams of information from the desk of the ambassador about British and allied intentions in the Near and Middle East and for the conduct of the War generally, and might easily have compromised operation OVERLORD.

CICERO was the code-name allocated to valet Elyess Bazna, a former convict employed by ambassador Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, who sold copies of documents he obtained through the ambassador's carelessness to a German military attaché in Ankara. The tale has become a popular (and frequently mis-told) war story and subject of many books and films, including the 1952 Joseph L Mankiewicz/James Mason movie, Five Fingers.

This file concerns the efforts of the Security Service to piece together the events of the CICERO case after the War once the scale of the espionage became evident from interrogations of German prisoners. It includes a comprehensive case summary written at the time of the preparation of the official history of British intelligence in the Second World War. The file draws together evidence about the leak from various agencies and interrogations of witnesses, and includes a report on the case to the Director General in June 1945 and correspondence between Menzies and the Secret Intelligence Service and Petrie on ways to tighten embassy security (folios 23a to 27a).

See also the personal file relating to the German translator who handled the CICERO material in Berlin, Maria Molkenteller (KV 2/1171).